The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.42

c10.s7.42

The one town in the Greek sphere which has been excavated, Taxila, was unfortunately not a Greek *polis*. Hellenistic Taxila has already been noticed (p. 179); but the town on Sirkap now so well known from the excavations is essentially the Parthian town of Gondophares, one of his capitals, and the bulk of the jewellery and small objects found, which are very numerous, illustrate Parthian culture in the middle of the first century A.D.¹ Sir John Marshall’s comparisons of the details revealed by excavation with the account of Taxila in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius² have shown that Philostratus, however much he may have romanced in other ways, had before him a tolerably accurate account of the external aspect of Taxila itself, given by some traveller who visited it in Gondophares’ reign; and though the ground-plan of Hellenistic Taxila was fairly regular, Philostratus remarks on the narrow and irregular streets of the Parthian town, which are compared to those of Athens.³ The palace, a plain unadorned building in the middle of the town, probably Śaca or Parthian, is frankly an Assyrian palace; it has been compared to Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad.⁴